


Third Hand

by fojee



Category: I Am Sorry I Love You, Taiwanese Drama
Genre: F/M, Fix-it fic, M/M, Multi, No dying allowed, alternative universe, smut-free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 09:06:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5863108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fojee/pseuds/fojee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The watch--which serves as anchor for Li Hong Pei's wandering spirit--still works, but Wang Shu Hai knows it's running out of time. And he's desperate to find a way to bring Hong Pei back. For Han Si Yi's sake, if not his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Third Hand

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not sure if people watched this show. (It's only a few episodes, guys! Ignore creepy stalkerish behaviour. It gets better, I promise.) In which case, the salient points are these: Li Hong Pei and Han Si Yi are college sweethearts. On graduation day, Hong Pei gets into an accident before he can give Si Yi a very special watch. Six years later, Si Yi gets the watch into Wang Shu Hai's very capable hands. It gets fixed, but when Shu Hai puts it on, Hong Pei's spirit appears. 
> 
> There's a bad guy that turns out to be a sad guy, a lot of nerds including the super-cute Mystic Dragon, and a super bittersweet ending that everybody who has watched 49 Days saw coming. But it's so amazing. All the ingredients for a great OT3 and they give us a tearjerker instead. (I'm not complaining. Much.)
> 
> Anyway in this version. Shu Hai doesn't have a heart condition. Also, magic happens.

A watch has three hands. The hour, the minute and the second. You would think that Wang Shu Hai would be the hour hand, because he's awkward, and for ages he's been crushing on this girl, his 'goddess' and he hasn't done anything about it. But he's actually the one that counts the seconds, because he thinks too much, too fast, and because he's always running away.

The hour and the minute hands are Han Si Yi and Ling Hong Pei. Moving together but a little out of step. Hong Pei is in a hurry, while Si Yi tries and tries to catch up. 

Once upon a time, a long time ago, these three people got tangled up in red string. That was the same day that Shu Hai won a watch that the kids traded to Hong Pei, who wanted to give it to Si Yi after graduation.

But he never made it.

Then six years later, that watch finds its way back into Wang Shu Hai's hands. He fixes it, replaces bent springs and chipped cogs, and the shattered face. And then he tries it on, and Ling Hong Pei's spirit appears.

\---

What kind of fate is this? Li Hong Pei's oldest and best friend turns out to be his worst enemy. Xiang Jian Hao paid someone to run him over. Then he, along with Hong Pei's mother, lied to everyone that he had died. 

All because he wanted Si Yi for himself.

And then his _new_ friend, Wang Shu Hai, _also_ falls for Han Si Yi.

Even when he thought he was just a ghost, he still felt like himself. But when he found out the truth, the rage ran like quicksilver through his veins, and he felt it spring free like black wings on his back, and he felt his teeth grow into fangs. The urge to destroy, to hurt them as much as he hurts, manifested on his insubstantial body. He had a taste of inhumanity, and it scared the crap out of him.

But Shu Hai didn't seem scared. He looked worried about him. It was a strange thing to feel directed at him, a mixture of a parent's care and a brother's fond exasperation. Why is it that he had just met Wang Shu Hai and he already feels like family?

\---

"Are you out of your mind?" Mystic Dragon's words were harsh, but Shu Hai knew his friend was speaking out of worry. "You're not even sure if it will work! It's too risky!"

"It's my choice," he says simply. The watch was on his palm, and he rubbed a thumb over its face. It's still working, but the damage was a lot worse this time. The goons had come close to destroying it for good. He wasn't sure how long the connections would hold. And if it stops working again, where would Hong Pei's spirit go? _That_ he couldn't risk.

He had found a ritual from an ancient shaman. It could bind a wandering spirit back to his body. But it required that the caster shed his own blood and tie his own life to the spell. He had only told Mystic Dragon, because Zheng Nan would kill him if she found out, and he didn't want to give either Si Yi or Hong Pei foolish hopes. 

"I'm doing this whether you're here or not," he finally said to shut up his friend. 

"Alright," Mystic Dragon surrendered, rubbing his eyes. "You stubborn bastard."

\---

Han Si Yi was tired of people and their secrets. Did they really see her as the vulnerable one, the one who needs to be protected? She had come this far. She could handle the truth.

Learning about Xiang Jian Hao's betrayal could have broken her, and finding out that Ling Hong Pei was still alive came pretty damn close, but she was stronger than that. 

She knew Wang Shu Hai was planning something. He couldn't look her in the eye, and he made excuses about coming to visit Hong Pei's body in the hospital. She cornered Mystic Dragon one afternoon, and coerced the truth from him.

"He's trying to bring Hong Pei back. It's dangerous for the both of them, so stay by Hong Pei's side, while I watch over Shu Hai."

Si Yi bit her lip. Mystic Dragon looked resigned, and there wasn't anything she could say that wouldn't sound like a lie. If there was a chance that it could work...

"Tell him to do it at the hospital. You guys can commandeer an empty room nearby. If he's risking himself, he might as well do it where he could get help fast. And the physical distance might make a difference for Hong Pei, too."

Mystic Dragon raised his eyebrows, but nodded at her with newfound respect. "I'll see what I can do."

\---

They couldn't actually find an empty room, but Shu Hai found a janitor's closet that was big enough. He would have to light some incense but the smoke wouldn't be bad enough to trigger the sprinklers. With Mystic Dragon guarding the door, he laid the watch in a bowl and took out a knife, holding it against the flesh on his forearm. The first cut didn't hurt right away, but the blood welled up and ran down his arm towards the bowl, and he hissed at the sting that soon settled into a dull throb. 

The ritual itself wasn't too complicated. He had memorized everything, but kept a copy at hand just in case. He reads from it the lines that would call Hong Pei. The light in the closet flickered for a moment. The hair at the back of his neck rose, so something must be happening.

He uttered the last phrase, but his words disappeared in the gust of air that washed over him. His heartbeat was too loud for a moment, then it faltered. Then it beat again, faster and faster, and he knew it was beating in time with Ling Hong Pei's in the room two doors down the hall.

That was the last thing he remembered.

\---

The nurses were all in a tizzy. The handsome coma patient woke up, and almost simultaneously, a guy was found collapsed in the janitor's closet. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with him, aside from the shallow cut on his arm. He was set up on a hospital bed on the same floor, while they ordered more tests for him.

\---

 

Six years. Six years in a coma was a long time. That explained how everything seemed to be different once he woke up. Ling Hong Pei didn't realize it at first. Si Yi was beside him, tears flowing down her cheeks. He reached for her on instinct, and she reached back, squeezing his hand. 

Then the door blasted open and someone he didn't know was shouting, and Si Yi turned around, dropping his hand and rushing out the door. And then the nurses were there, and his mother, and he was trying to call for Si Yi but couldn't through the tube down his throat. 

Someone put something in his IV and he was soon dragged under.

The next time he woke up, only his mother was there, beaming down at him. 

"Si Yi," he managed to speak.

"She's just with a friend," she explained softly. "She'll be back tomorrow, alright?"

"What happened?" It was just a simple question, so why did his mother's eyes fill with tears?

"Later, sweetheart. I'll tell you everything later. But thank you for coming back." 

_Back from where?_ Hong Pei wondered, before the darkness dragged him down again.

\---

"He doesn't remember?" Mystic Dragon's voice was hard and disbelieving.

Si Yi bowed her head. What else could she say? "He doesn't even remember the accident. Then we had to tell him about Jian Hao and he refused to believe us."

"It figures," Mystic Dragon said with a snort. "That idiot."

Si Yi was only eighty percent sure that Mystic Dragon was referring to Shu Hai. "Do you think he'll wake up?" She asked in a small voice.

"Wang Shu Hai is a fighter," Mystic Dragon declared. "Don't write him off just yet."

He was right to be optimistic.

Wang Shu Hai woke up after a couple of weeks, though he had to stay longer at the hospital for more tests. He still had some unexplained weakness in his limbs, and he was wan and pale. He accepted the news of Hong Pei's memory loss with stoic endurance. 

"I'm glad it worked," he told Si Yi through a small smile. "I'm happy for you."

Si Yi grabbed his hand and didn't know how to reply.

\---

When Hong Pei was discharged--which took longer than he liked because of the physiotherapy for his atrophied muscles--he insisted that Si Yi drove him home. She visited him often enough, but often disappeared after a couple of hours "to visit a friend." He wanted her undivided attention.

But Han Si Yi took a detour, parking in front of a two-story apartment just below the metal railing of a balcony. "Sorry," she said. "I just need to pick up a few things." She hesitated with the door open. "Do you want to come with me?"

"Whose place is this?" Hong Pei asked, peering up through the windshield into the dark windows.

Si Yi's face dropped. "A friend's," she whispered.

Li Hong Pei put two and two together. "Alright." With a grunt, he leveraged himself out of the car and walked slowly beside Si Yi up a set of stairs into a tiny, messy one-room apartment. From the posters on the wall, he knew right away that it belonged to a man.

"So when were you going to tell me that you've replaced me?" Hong Pei asked, leaning heavily against the desk and watching while Si Yi moved confidently around the room, grabbing clothes and a laptop and putting them into a bag.

Si Yi froze, then carefully put the bag down. "That's not," she began, then cleared her throat. "That's not what happened, Hong Pei."

"Then what?" He asked.

"It's complicated," Si Yi said, hands twisting. 

"What's his name?" His voice was soft.

Si Yi met his eyes with hers. "Wang Shu Hai. He's an amazing person, Hong Pei."

All of a sudden, Hong Pei couldn't look at her through the pain squeezing his chest. He dropped his gaze onto the table-top. Balanced precariously over books and papers was a bowl. There was something inside it. He raised his hand and it hovered uncertainly over the bit of tarnished metal. "I'm sure he is," he said bitterly. "I hope you'll be very happy together."

"Don't say that!" Si Yi never raised her voice with him this way. "You don't even know--" Her voiced trailed away, and she covered her eyes with her hands.

"Know what?" Hong Pei demanded. 

"How much he loves you," Si Yi answered with her eyes still covered.

It was a strange answer, and Hong Pei frowned upon hearing it. "I don't even know him, so--" Just then his fingertips touched the metal of a broken watch. 

It felt like an electric shock.

_A man with glasses looking at him with fear, then curiosity, then compassion. Getting close enough to breathe in someone else's breath, but sliding through him, like he was made of dream and fog. The frustration of hands passing through walls, through flesh. The triumph of making a ball move. Unfamiliar laughter bubbling up under his ribs. Overflowing love at finding Si Yi, despair at looking without being seen. The taste of such utter loneliness on his tongue. Watching her cry, and not being able to do a thing. Watching the man's head bent over a watch around his wrist he is painstakingly putting together. Watching his own pain reflected on the man's face. The scent of roses. The sensation of moving someone else's limbs, his fingers inside someone else's hands. The man gasping for air on a bed, and not being able to do a thing. Watching other people beat the man, whose only concern is protecting the watch. The white-hot pain of Jian Hao's betrayal piercing straight through him. The fangs growing in his mouth, and wings of fire sprouting at his back. So much anger and hate filling his limbs like lava flow. Then weakness, exhaustion. And those hands hovering over him while he tried to remember how to be human. The man, now without his glasses, looking at him with understanding, with helplessness, with determination. Watching Si Yi by the man's side, laughing. Watching Si Yi's arms wrapped around the man's shoulders. Watching the man stop his mother from killing herself. Watching the man toss and turn on his bed, worry etched on his face. And not being able to press his fingers to smooth the furrow between the man's brows. Not being able to sling a shoulder around the man's shoulders and pull him close. Not being able to run a hand through the man's newly shorn hair. Not being able to do a damn thing, while the man desperately reads through book after book, searching for a way to bring him home..._

Li Hong Pei gasped with the sensation of moving from empty to full in a fraction of a second. Full of every feeling, every thought, every joy, every sorrow... 

"Are you okay?" Si Yi's hands were on his arms, her worried face close to his.

Hong Pei closed his eyes and focused on the feeling of her fingers against his flesh. Was that the scent of roses in the air? "I think I need to go back to the hospital," he said as calmly as he could manage.

Si Yi didn't argue, grabbing the bag on the floor, then guiding him down the stairs and into the car with surprising strength. He leaned back, trying to put those fragments into a semblance of order.

When they walked back in, he ignored Si Yi's attempts to herd him towards the doctor. He got into the elevator and pressed a number. Si Yi got in beside him, her pleas trailing away. They didn't speak the rest of the time it took for him to step out on the right floor and head towards a room as if by instinct.

Inside that room, a man was sitting up, perched precariously on the side of the bed. He held onto the IV pole with one hand. He looked up when the door opened, and his eyes widened when he saw the person walking through it. 

He opened his mouth to speak.

Hong Pei didn't let him. He walked straight towards him, and pulled him up by the arms. Then, ignoring the other man's flinch, Hong Pei wrapped both arms around the man's neck and shoulders, and just held on.

He was warm, his pulse beating fast at the base of his neck. He was stiff for a moment, then slowly, gradually relaxing, until he also raised his arms and wrapped them around Hong Pei's waist, palms curving against his back.

They stayed like that for a few minutes. Neither of them noticed Han Si Yi standing by the door, hand over her mouth, tears running down her cheeks. Neither of them noticed anything beyond the reassurance and comfort of each other's solidity.

To Li Hong Pei, it felt like coming home. 

When they finally did notice Si Yi, Shu Hai beamed at her, and keeping a hand low on Hong Pei's back, he opened his other arm, waited for Hong Pei to do the same, and welcomed Han Si Yi into the space between the two of them. She fit perfectly in their arms.

He must have been the one who started laughing, but Hong Pei and Si Yi soon followed suit.

When Mystic Dragon walked into a room full of laughing people, he walked out again. "A bunch of idiots," he muttered under his breath. But he was smiling.

\---

A watch has three hands. The hour, the minute and the second. No matter how you look at it, they all work together, each one essential to the whole. Marking the passage of every moment, traveling from the past, and towards the future. 

And fastened together at one common point. Maybe with a little red string of fate.

Believe it or not, Han Si Yi, Li Hong Pei, and Wang Shu Hai got their happily ever after. One moment's worth at a time.

**Author's Note:**

> Bryant Chang is hot. (Though Jasper's not bad on the eyes either.) Also episode 2 is my favourite. For Reasons. 
> 
> (I'm not even that into T-dramas, but why is it that they're the ones with the guys kissing, the lovely innuendo, the cross-dressing, the two men as life partners raising a child together... Gah.)


End file.
